The Technicatome company, created in 1972, is a subsidiary company of CEA Industry and DCN International (65%), of Framatome (25%) and EDF (10%). This company ensures, since its creation and on behalf of the ECA, the control of industrial work of the nuclear reactors embarked on the submarines (SNA and SNLE) and the aircraft carriers using nuclear propulsion. Technicatome ensures in addition the development and the manufacture of fuel, the exploitation of the prototype engines and the training of the crews of the Navy and the engineers of the Management of the Shipbuildings (DCN). Apart from the field of the nuclear propulsion, the Technicatome group exerts its competences in the branches of industry having jointly extreme requirements of safety, reliability and availability like aeronautics and the space one, transport, heavy industry and the civil nuclear power.
All of its test facilities are located at Cadarache, including prototype and experimental reactors to validate concepts of nuclear reactors for marine propulsion. Mechanical and electric buildings for the development of different components (pumps) and equipment, the overall assembly and the maintenance of the embarked hardware are also at Cadarache, as well as a fuels workshop for the entire prototype engines and for the series equipping the SNLE, SNA and the aircraft carrier Charles of Gaulle. Cadarache is also the location of a center of training of the crews of the National Navy to the behaviour of the embarked reactors, in relation to the School of the Military Applications of the Atomic Energy of Cherbourg. Technicatome exploits the installations of the CEA devoted to the nuclear propulsion, which were first built in 1960. After the year 2000, a new reactor, the Engine of Essais (LMBO), will come to ensure the continuity of the prototype reactors as well as the behaviour of the embarked reactors.